In my last post I discussed about LePhone’s interesting form factor design. LePhone comes in round shape, which is entirely different from existing prevalent mobile handset form factors. So here we come to next few questions; what mobile handset industry is up-to in coming years? What’re the designs challenges getting tackled by handset industry? Which mobile form factor design was mostly adopted? ABI research’s latest report on trends in mobile handset design tackles some of these questions.
According to the report, mobile handset shipment reached to 1.5billion in 2009. Out of these shipped phones, 81{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of them were either enhanced phones or smartphones. Let’s summaries the report in short:
- 3.5G handset category is the fastest growing handset segment. 56{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} of handset models launches in 2009 were 3.5G ready, while 2G/2.5G model shipments dropped in comparison.
- GPS is new buzz in smartphone industry where penetration rate of GPS enabled handset reached to 48{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} in 2009 in comparison to 29{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3} in 2008.
- Coming back to form factor design, Bar form factor is the most popular among handset manufacturer (51{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}), followed by slider form factor handset (27{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}).
- Microsoft Windows Mobile still has the highest adoption rate among operating systems of newly launched models, with Symbian taking second place.
- According to report, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, TI’s OMAP, Intel’s Atom and Nvidia’s Tegra are driving the markets for 3G and 3.5G technology, the development of 4th Generation LTE and WiMAX chipsets is primarily led by Altair Semiconductor, Wavesat, and Comsys Mobile, among others.
In India, particularly, Nokia is the leading handset manufacturer. But with the advent of 3G & WiMAX, the picture is likely to change soon. With Android devices gaining popularity, India saw 8 smartphone launches within 10 days in month of March. But what India needs currently is the smartphone below 10K Rs price tag and as said above NGN Mobile Services will likely to catalyze handset sale in India, particularly smartphones.
